SELF INFLICTED WOUND

After all the inquiries, investigations, and court martials are done, what will be left of the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal? According to the Vatican spokesman, the damage done to American-Islam relations will be substantial and by their estimation, will hurt America worse than the attacks of 9/11. The statement read as follows...ROME - The scandal of prisoner abuses by U.S. soldiers in Iraq has dealt a bigger blow to the United States than the Sept. 11 attacks, the Vatican foreign minister told an Italian newspaper. In an interview published Wednesday in the Rome daily La Repubblica, Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo described the abuses as "a tragic episode in the relationship with Islam" and said the scandal would fuel hatred for the West and for Christianity.

"The torture? A more serious blow to the United States than Sept. 11. Except that the blow was not inflicted by terrorists but by Americans against themselves," Lajolo was quoted as saying in La Repubblica. Lajolo said that "intelligent people in Arab countries understand that in a democracy such episodes are not hidden and are punished ... Still the vast mass of people — under the influence of Arab media — cannot but feel aversion and hate for the West growing inside themselves." And, he added, "the West is often identified with Christianity."

The repair stragtegy currently underway will do nothing to repair the public perception in the Muslim world or to change the feelings towards the west or the disdain they have for the American occupation of Iraq. The fuel is on the fire, and the people who hated us hate us more, and now the people who didn't hate us are reconsidering how they feel.

The Cold War has turned into a Hot War, some are calling it WW III, and it seems that it will be with us for quite some time. Like the terrorists that seem small in numbers, yet so effective when they strike, the few soldiers that violated the Iraqi prisoners and took pictures of what they were doing, the few will affect many for a very long time.